


aftermath, aftereffects

by BlackJacketsandPens



Category: Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Gen, M/M, listen nightmare sequences are fun, local hope boy is a lot more messed up than he's capable of articulating, post-dr3, protagonist intervention needed stat, references dr3 and udg and the komaeda manga, why did i write this in second person idefk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-28
Updated: 2018-08-28
Packaged: 2019-07-03 18:35:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15824607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackJacketsandPens/pseuds/BlackJacketsandPens
Summary: Even after it's all over, as everyone adjusts, things aren't going to be okay. Not for a while. Especially not for him. For...a lot of reasons.(Set post-DR3.)





	aftermath, aftereffects

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve written and rewritten this for the past week, to be quite honest. It’s very difficult to be absolutely sure I’ve got them both right, and I’m still uncertain, but if I don’t post it now it’ll never actually get posted. 
> 
> Nightmare sequences are the good shit, and that scene in the Komaeda manga stuck with me.

You've had this dream before.

It's a constant in your life, like so much else. Not nearly every day, but often enough that you're used to it. You know fairly well how easy it is to become used to something if it happens often enough -- though you'd _never_ say something so presumptuous as _you know better than others_.

Your dream is a long hallway, cold and sterile, windows on both sides. You stop a few feet in, staring blankly at the scene on the other side of the glass. You watch yourself as a child -- you were four -- and hear your broken sobs, see your tiny form bent over your dead dog, the blood still fresh on the street and the stopped truck behind you.

There is glass between you and your memory. It doesn't touch you. Not the pain, not the sorrow.

You let your fingers trail along your dog's memorial photo, wreathed in black as tradition and perched in front of the window like a sign at a zoo, telling the viewer what animal is on display... and then move on.

After your dog is your parents, two photo with blurry faces standing in front of the crash, frozen in time. The glass protects you, and you walk away, brushing yen bills off your shoulder. You know the order of events by now. Your kidnapping, a paper ticket in your hand you let flutter to the ground. Death, piles of bodies behind glass, a parade of friends and acquaintances still and motionless, the opposite wall covered in rows and rows of photos.

You can recall every name, even if the rest is a blur. But it's safe behind glass. It doesn't hurt.

You walk through a half-lit examination room, spotlights on you and the doctor who told you that you had a year or less left to live. His voice is the drone of a cheap air conditioner, and you walk out of the room.

Paper is in your hand and you only spare it a glance now -- you don't drop it, letting the acceptance letter remain in your grasp as you approach Hope's Peak. Even knowing this part of the dream, it still makes something stir in your chest. You don't belong here, not among _them_. You're a lump of coal among stars, and just the chance to bathe in their light, their hope, was beyond fathoming. Beyond any arrogant dreams. You're...so very lucky.

You keep walking forward, expecting the dream to end with a tug at your ankle -- that’s how it’s ended for a while now -- but it...doesn’t. You walk towards the gate, somewhat puzzled, and this time you enter the campus before you. But-- as soon as you do, everything vanishes. It all vanishes, plunging you into pitch black darkness. You can’t even see the hand you lift to your face, and...and it almost feels like you’re without a body, just existing in this black expanse. Only your fingers on your cheek tell you otherwise.

You’re not afraid of the dark. You keep walking.

You walk, and continue to do so, until you hear a splash. You blink, confused, and step forward. Splash again. Are you standing in water? You look down and see blackness, and frown, and keep moving. If you can’t see it...there’s no point in trying to investigate further.

Slowly, light begins to bleed in around you, sick and red, and you’re on a road that’s all broken pavement, and you smell smoke and blood thick enough to make you cough. You stop to catch your breath, bending slightly, and you see what you’ve been walking in.

It’s blood. Your shoes and the bottom of your pants are soaked in it, thick and red and fresh, and a gasp escapes you. It’s puddled beneath your feet, inches of it, a sea of it, and you spin around to see it stretches behind you, sticky footprints in a sea of crimson. You look around you, trying to find the source, confused and feeling your heart start to beat faster.

Bodies. More of them, more than your old dead friends, hundreds and hundreds of bodies, piled on either side of you. The blood pours from them, collecting where you stand, and you hear screams now, too -- see people, blank and faceless, nameless and anonymous, running, screaming, torn apart by familiar black-and-white bears with their half-grinning faces and their sharp claws.

... _Towa City,_ you realize. It’s Towa. Your heart picks up the pace, beating loud in your chest like a gong being struck, fast like a drumbeat in one of Ibuki’s songs. Your breath is audible, too, you realize. No, it-- there’s no glass. There’s no wall, no careful partition between you and your memories, keeping them from hurting, from overwhelming. You’re in this and you’re part of this, and then you look at your hands, they’re red and sticky too, dripping gore.

As much as you hate it, hate _them_ , hate everything about it...you know you were part of this. _You did this_. You were a member of Ultimate Despair. The thought, the words, they strike you in the gut and you double over, frantically wiping bloody hands on your jacket, your shirt, hardly registering the clothes you’re in until the collar around your throat bites into your skin. It’s that that sets you off, then, and you break into a run. You hate running, it leaves you out of breath and dizzy and feeling like you’re about to faint, but you run. The sound of blood splattering under your feet echoes in the air like gunshots, and the memories chase you like wolves at your heels.

The despair you caused, the sins you committed, the people you hurt. You believed in your cause, that you were causing despair for the hope that would follow, but to cause so much _suffering_ \-- is that right, to cause it? You aren’t sure, you don’t think so. There is enough pain in the world for hope to flourish without people to force despair down humanity’s throats.

You don’t know. You never know for sure. You do what you think, you do what you believe, and you never know for sure if it’s _right_. You know you hurt people, but you don’t know why. You don’t know why it hurts them. You know what it is that hurt and you try not to repeat it but you don’t know _why_.

But-- but this you, the you that caused all this, didn’t even care to stop. You had your goal and your beliefs and your shining ideal and you helped drench this city in blood for it, and you didn’t care. You couldn’t and didn’t want to even try. You thought it was wonderful, glorious, a game-- a _game_ \--

The ghost of a girl you once knew whispers past in your memories -- _I love games,_ she said _. Killing is wrong, no matter what,_ she said. -- and something in your chest feels like a burst balloon.

You stop running, legs wobbling and breath wheezing, and it’s only when you see the edges of wheels in front of you that you look up.

The children-- you remember them. They lie there, the five of them, dead. Blood stains their clothing, eyes stare out at nothing-- at _you_ , accusingly-- lined up all in a row. The hero, his red hair matted with blood and the fighter, her skirt torn and headband broken, sit to the left. To the right, the priest, mask gone and face battered and the sage, tears staining his cheeks. And in the middle, _her_. She’s slumped in her wheelchair, eyes closed, drooping to the side.

You stumble forward, reaching out to straighten her without knowing why--

Her eyes snap open and they’re Junko Enoshima’s, swirling black abysses of despair, and she laughs that horrible echoing giggle, and she grabs the chain of your collar in both hand and _pulls_ , pulls with strength she shouldn’t have, and you gasp and choke and fall forward into blackness again.

You pull yourself to your feet, not recognizing where you are at first. Your hands and body are clean, and you wear your familiar green jacket, and you walk forward in the dim light until you hear another splash and your toe hits something soft and large. You freeze this time, and slowly look down.

The Impostor’s eyes stare up at you from behind unneeded glasses, lying on his back with the skewer sticking out of his chest like he himself was a piece of meat. Blood stains his white suit, and the ground beneath him, and you choke out a noise and stagger backwards. As you do you see next to him a smaller corpse, burnt as to be unrecognizable, but the red scarf in tatters at its neck tells you it’s Teruteru.

You want to cry out, but your voice won’t work in the dream. You know you did this. You know you didn’t regret. You know why you did it-- your goals, your ideals, for the sake of hope. Everything you do is for the sake of hope. Everything you’ve ever done. For hope. You do what you do and no one ever tells you it’s wrong until after you do it, because you cannot tell. You have never been able to tell.

You have never told anyone -- _you told one person, but you told him it was a lie, you told him too late_ \-- about your rotting brain. You have never told anyone that you cannot understand wrong or right, cannot understand why not to do what you want to do, cannot understand when people are being insincere, cannot understand when you say something strange, cannot cannot cannot. You know these things, but you cannot change them. You have always been this way, as long as you can recall clearly. You are worthless, you are trash, you know this too. You hurt people and you don’t understand anything, even when all you want to do is help. You just want to help, to encourage, to be useful somehow.

But you know you can’t even do that properly, and the bodies before you are proof.

You wobble, reaching out towards the corpses you made, but something catches your eye in the distance and you move forward.

It’s Mahiru, you realize, blood dripping from her hair and her head. Peko leans against her, bleeding from too many wounds, glasses shattered on her face and tears on her cheeks. Your breath catches and you walk faster.

Ibuki is there, rope burns on her neck. Hiyoko lays beside her, kimono in shambles and blood dripping from her throat. Mikan lays nearby, skirt hiked up and legs spread perversely, eyes wide and dark with despair and smile nearly splitting her face in two. You avert your eyes and you walk faster.

Nekomaru is there then, robotic body smashed and stained with oil, and Gundam lies beside him, bruised and broken.

You let out some sort of noise, words still stuck, and then you look ahead of you-- you see five shadows, familiar in outline, and you break into a run.

Your breath comes in short gasps as you do -- it seems like you’re running forever -- but your voice returns and you cannot recognize the emotion in it. “Hajime!” You cry out. “Fuyuhiko! Kazuichi! Sonia, Akane!” You break off to gasp. _“Hajime!”_

They do not answer, and there is a sharp pain in your legs that makes you gasp and stagger, looking down to see blood blooming on your thighs, a dozen cuts tearing up your jeans. You look down to see your hand bleeding, your arm bleeding, your white shirt stained with blood. You let out a shuddering breath and try to run further, but you trip and you fall.

You trip and you fall and you feel wetness on your cheek where it hits the ground, the smell of blood enough to make you gag.

You struggle to sit up and Chiaki’s bloody body stares at you from inches away, her face turned towards you as if trying to tell you something.

You scream. You didn’t know you could make that sound. She doesn’t vanish.

You reach for her, apologies dying on lips that don’t deserve to speak them. It wasn’t the real Chiaki you got killed, but you still killed her-- you killed the real one, too. A secret you have never spoken aloud: you think that it was your luck that put her in Junko’s sights. Because she was kind to you, because she was the only one that treated you like part of the class. Because she made you happy, your luck murdered her.

It’s an arrogant, selfish thought to think -- it was because she was the glue, because the whole class loved her, that she was killed. She was their heart and their hope. It’s the height of hubris to think a worthless person like you was a cause. But you cannot stop that thought.

You still cradle her in your arms a moment, this girl the world did not deserve, this shining star whose death had destroyed the rest of you. You close her eyes with a hand that shakes, unable to articulate why it’s doing that, and you think to yourself that it might be a good thing you aren’t sure how to cry anymore.

You ran out of tears a long time ago, you think. If you still knew how to cry, there wouldn’t be anything left.

You lay her down, gently, and step over her, continuing towards the five that wait in the distance.

You get closer, and closer, and then another scream rips out of you as you see them clearly at last -- they too are bloody, pale with death, clothing torn and faces dripping crimson. Their eyes are open, and they stare at you accusingly.

“No,” you manage. You don’t know why you say it. Isn’t this what you had wanted, once? You had wanted to kill them all. They had caused so much despair. You had too. Of course you wanted them all to die, yourself included. Despair couldn’t be suffered to live. “No,” you repeat. Were they still despair, though? You know-- you know they’re trying to change. You know Hajime’s eyes here are wrong. They’re the wrong color, both pale green. You know this is the past, not the future, and that they aren’t despair or hope anymore. You don’t know what any of you are anymore, but you think that’s the point.

You don’t know if you can change. You don’t think so. But they are, the stars you adore so much, that had been stained black. They aren’t white or black anymore, they’re grey, and you aren’t sure you can understand _greyness_ \-- but for hope, you know you’ve tried.

You reach for them, and then Hajime moves.

His hands lift, and-- and he grabs you by the throat, fingers squeezing hard until you choke and gasp and claw helplessly at his arms. But his grip is iron, and you can barely wheeze out his name.

“You did this,” he says, voice cold and hard with hate. “You caused this. All this death is your fault. You started the game-- you’re the one to blame for everything.”

You can’t defend yourself, your voice stolen with your breath, but even if it wasn’t, he’s right. Your legs give and you fall to the floor and he follows, knee on your chest as he keeps pressing fingers into your throat.

“You’re sick,” Hajime accuses viciously. “You’re twisted. What kind of hope do you want? What kind of hope causes this much bloodshed? That isn’t hope. Nothing but despair came from any of this. We _never_ found hope. We found strength in each other, but we never found hope. You’re blind to the damage you cause, you’re blind to how _insane_ you are-- how could we ever accept you? We should have let you _starve_.”

Oh, you think. You still have tears after all.

You try to speak, wheezing helplessly, and Hajime eases his grip enough that you can gasp desperately. Your voice breaks, but you keep trying. “I just--” You try. “I wanted to help,” you insist weakly. “I just wanted to be useful to you all.”

“Well, you weren’t,” he snarls. “You’re right, Nagito, you’re worthless. You’re fucked up, you’re dangerous, and you shouldn’t be here. You should have died first, to your own trick.”

“I know that!” You shout, and you even startle yourself. “I _know_. I wanted to.” Your voice shakes. “That was the plan. I was hoping--” you were hoping Teruteru would kill you, but the Impostor, he-- “I can’t,” you say, admitting another secret aloud. “I know I can’t. Nothing ever kills me. Every close call, every disaster that happens around me, nothing ever kills me. Not even when it should.” You could show him the scars on your body -- not a ridiculous amount, but proof aside that nothing can end it, no matter how viciously fate tries -- but your hands shake too much to even lift your shirt. “It’s always everyone around me, and never me. Why do you think I haven’t tried to do it myself? Because it wouldn’t _work!”_

You’re not stupid enough to attempt suicide -- if every single disaster leaves you untouched, if you’ve lived years longer than you were supposed to with two fatal diseases, you would never be able to end it yourself-- even the time you succeeded, the one time you tried, it had been assisted...and then not even _real_. But that doesn’t mean you don’t want it to stop.

“You know,” Hajime says. “For someone who’s so obsessed with hope, you don’t seem to have any. How hypocritical.”

You laugh, and you smile up at him, hollow and empty. “I know,” you say again, because you do, and the final secret leaves your lips. “I know I am. I’ve been in despair far longer than I’ve even known the word. That’s why I cling to hope. That’s why I fight for it, why I believe in it so much. I have to.” Your voice shakes. “I have to.”

That is what you’re built on. That is what you’ve built yourself on, from the ground up. The knowledge that you -- worthless, rotting, empty you, with your luck that tears everything you have apart only to give you happiness, fleeting like cherry blossoms and worthless in its transience, gone with the next disaster -- are standing above a pit of blackest, deepest despair, standing on the thinnest branch, and all you have to keep yourself from falling is a rope called hope. A rope called hope that you cling to with all your might, believe in with everything your fractured mind can muster. You have to. If you doubt, if you falter, you will fall.

You live like this -- you live, afraid and alone and hopeful despite your awareness that you are worthless trash that can’t do anything, can’t shine like the hopeful lights you adore, you live with a too-sharp awareness of everything that can go wrong in any situation you’re in, with a heart always close to panic and a head that’s rotting from the inside out and stealing your rationality, your coherency, your ability to understand humanity -- and you hope with all your might that you can be useful to those you love. Just once, just one thing. You are going to die one day, one day soon, and all you want, all you have ever wanted, is for it to be given meaning. To bring hope with your last breath.

( ~~All you want, all you have ever wanted, is to not be alone in the end. To be loved when you take your last breath.~~ )

“Hajime,” you manage, still smiling, and you lift bloody hands to his cheeks. “If it makes you feel better, do it. Please. If my death can make you happy, I-- that’s all I want.” He stares at you with green eyes that don’t look right. “I just wanted to help,” you say again. “To help you all, the only way someone like me could. I know it was wrong. I don’t know why, but I know it hurt you. And I’m sorry. If my death can make it better…please. Do it. If I can make you happy, then I’ll be happy too.” Your voice cracks, and you don’t understand why. “I just want you to be happy. I love you all so much...”

His hands tighten. “Shut up,” he says, and you comply. Your hands are still on his cheeks, and they leave red streaks as your vision greys and your arms lose strength, fingertips sliding down his face.

* * *

You wake up with a choked gasp, a hand going to your throat.

You’re fine, you realize. You’re lying in bed in your cottage, tangled in the sheets, the night sky peeking in through the blinds you haven’t gotten around to replacing with curtains. It really was just a dream.

You know that, you think, but in the end you’d forgotten. But…you still feel shaken all the same. Those cold eyes and that hateful tone...you shudder reflexively and untangle yourself, sliding shoes on to pad quietly out into the night.

Everyone else is asleep still, on this real Jabberwock Island. Ryota is using the cabin that had belonged to Chiaki in the Program. You’re all alive. You’re all trying to move forward. Well...everyone else is. You still don’t know if you’re capable of it. You aren’t angry at the others anymore, at least. You don’t want to kill them. You think that’s a good thing.

Your artificial arm whirrs a little as you enter the hotel -- it doesn’t like the sea breeze much, you’ve found -- and you stop at the game consoles in the lobby. You stare down at them a moment, uncertain, before heading up the stairs towards the restaurant. You can’t sleep, and you don’t like taking walks at night (too dangerous) but a simple cup of tea might at least help.

You don’t expect anyone else to be awake -- hoping not; you’ve been avoiding everyone almost constantly since you all returned here and now is not a good time to change that -- and you stop with a little exhale of surprise when you see Hajime at one of the tables, staring out the window.

He jumps and turns to you, and one of his eyes is red. Green and red-- that’s it. That’s why the dream had looked wrong. You relax slightly, but can’t keep eye contact, still remembering how cold his eyes had been. You just lift a hand and wave, briefly, moving to the counter to find things to make tea.

You hope he leaves you be. You think he will. You don’t know, though. You don’t know him anymore, not like you thought you did. But he doesn’t know you, either.

You don’t quite realize what you’re doing until you hear footsteps behind you, and Hajime’s hands come around to stop yours. “That’s not a mug, Nagito,” he says, and you can’t name the emotion in his voice. “Are you still asleep?”

“Oh,” you say, finally registering that you were about to pour water onto your empty hand instead of into a cup. You laugh, but it sounds fake even to your ears, and you usually have a hard time picking up on that. “I suppose so. Haha, that would have hurt...”

There’s silence, and Hajime nudges you aside, grabbing a cup and fixing your tea for you. “Bad dream?” He asks, looking at you askance. The side you’re on, you can only see his green eye, and your voice catches.

“N-No,” you say. “It’s nothing.”

He doesn’t believe you and you can see it. He puts the mug down and turns to face you fully. “It isn’t,” he says. “You can talk to me, Nagito. If something’s bothering you, tell me.”

You stare at him, and you remember his hands at your throat, and the hate in his eyes-- but his hands are at his sides, now, and his eyes are soft with concern (concern you hardly deserve), and you look away.

“I’m sorry,” you say finally, and you can’t see his face but you hear an inhale. “Someone like me shouldn’t...burden you with things like this. It’s selfish.”

“It isn’t,” he says. “It’s what friends do.”

“ _Are_ we friends?” You ask. “I thought you all...” They all dislike you. Think you weird, off-putting, strange -- even on your good days, before it went wrong, when you knew the things you couldn’t understand and tried to work around it, when you knew that _causing_ despair wasn’t necessary to spread hope and would never dream of doing it -- and even now you feel apart, unwelcome, not even truly a classmate to the others, let alone a friend.

You love them all deeply, more than anything else in the world, but you know they do not feel the same. Especially not after what you’ve done. You did worse than them and you know it-- worse because you did it without your memories of the darkest days.

“You...you are to me,” Hajime admits slowly, sounding uncertain at first before becoming more firm. “Even...on your worst days, in the Program, I-- I wanted to _understand_ you. I still want that. I don’t know about the others, but I...I know you were just doing what you thought was right. It was wrong, what you did, and I don’t know if I can forgive you for it, but you were...genuine, at least, in wanting to help.” He laughs awkwardly. “I guess that means I _am_ starting to understand you.”

You have no words to that for a moment. “...but won’t that make me predictable?” You ask, the smallest of smiles on your face, wondering if you can push back, wondering if he’ll take the bait like he always used to, back off and give up like all the times before this. “I thought you didn’t like that, _Izuru_.”

He blinks, startled-- eyes grow colder by a few degrees, a moment, and you stiffen, but then...to your surprise, they warm again. “I don’t think you’ll ever be predictable, no matter how much I understand you,” he says finally, smiling. “That’s why I like you.”

“You shouldn’t say things like that,” you say, feeling something strangely warm bloom in your chest even if you can’t stop the sharp stab of panic from crossing your face and bleeding into your voice. “It’s dangerous. My luck...has a way of turning on people who say those things.”

His smile doesn’t falter. “You’re not the only one with Ultimate Luck,” he says. “Don’t forget. And mine is stronger. I’m not afraid of being your friend.” He reaches out to take your hand in his, your real one. “You...shouldn’t be afraid of that, either. Alright?”

The warmth in your chest burns. “...It’s shameful of me to be afraid after you say something like that,” you tell him. “To doubt an Ultimate…that’s low of me.”

“I wasn’t always an Ultimate,” he says. “And it’s fine to be afraid. Just because you shouldn’t be doesn’t mean it’s wrong if you are. Don’t worry, Nagito. We’ll face the future together. I promised the others that, too, and...I can promise you I’ll make sure you don’t have any more reasons to be afraid. Okay?”

You’re quiet for a moment. “...I love-- I love all of you,” you say, faltering at the last minute, coward as you are. “I just...don’t want my luck to cause you any more trouble. I’ve done enough.”

“It won’t,” Hajime says confidently. “We can handle it. And you have us to make sure you won’t do anything that awful or stupid again, you know? Talk to us when you think of doing something, and we can tell you if it’ll hurt anyone. If you can’t rely on yourself to judge your own actions, rely on us.”

You remember then that you _did_ tell him, and he can probably tell you lied when you said you’d been joking. He probably looked it up. “...I’ll do that,” you say. You think you can trust them. They have no reason to lie about things like that. “Thank you, Hajime.”

He grins at you, squeezing your hand before letting go -- and the coldness of its absence is saddening somehow -- and hands over your mug. You sip at it quietly a moment, savoring the warmth (and wishing he was still holding your hand).

He’s leaning on the counter, watching you, and you’re not sure what gives you the courage to speak again -- mismatched eyes on you, perhaps, the lingering warmth of his hand, or your current hyperawareness of the anxiety and self-loathing that forever sits sharp and cold in your veins -- but it happens.

“...do you think,” you say quietly, “that someone like me deserves to believe in hope as much as I do? Or is it...presumptuous, after everything I’ve done? It’s foolish to think about things like that, I know, but…”

“...It’s not about deserving to,” Hajime says after a moment. “But I think if _anyone_ deserves to believe in hope, it’s you. You’re...a lot stronger than you give yourself credit for, Nagito. You only told me a _fraction_ of what your life’s been like, and...you deserve to believe in hope, after all the despair you’ve been through even before you came to Hope’s Peak or met Junko. That you’re still here...you definitely set an example for the rest of us on believing.”

You stare at him a moment, and then laugh. “I’m not strong at all,” you say. “I’m weak, the weakest person here. Even if I believe in hope, it’s... _hollow_ compared to yours. It’s not _true_ hope, it’s…” You go quiet. “It’s the shallow, fragile, insincere hope of someone who’s lying to themselves that they aren’t already in despair.”

“I think that means it’s strong,” Hajime says, looking strangely amused. “You aren’t hearing yourself, are you? Your standards are way too high. The fact that you’ve suffered so much, but you still get up in the morning to face every day, even knowing that disaster could strike at any time-- that’s the strongest kind of hope, far as I’m concerned. Hope isn’t about an absence of despair, Nagito. That’s...what I’ve learned. It’s not about destroying despair, either. It’s...feeling despair and striding forward anyway. You can’t just kill despair, burn it to the roots and salt the earth. It doesn’t go away. We’re proof of that, after all.” He shakes his head, his smile fading, but looks back at you again. “You accept it’s there and move forward despite it. That’s what got us out of the Program safely. It’s what the world has to do, to heal. You’re not weak for hurting, you’re strong for being here regardless.”

You blink. You’re...oddly blank. You don’t know how to react to any of what Hajime’s said, how to react to what he means. Your hope is... _strong?_ That fraying little rope that keeps you from falling into the abyss? You can’t understand it, any of it. Hope was...not an absence of despair, not its opposite, but...just accepting the pain and living anyway? You can’t…you think in black and white, you know that. Hope and despair, absolute good and evil. To imagine that it’s not so simple is...

Hajime frowns and winces, laughing sheepishly. “That’s...alright, so that’s a lot to dump on you,” he admits. “ _Especially_ you. Just promise me you’ll think about what I said, Nagito? Even if it seems hard to understand.”

“...I’ll try,” you say after a long silence. “Even if someone like me can’t…I’ll try, I suppose. Because you asked.”

Hajime grins. “That’s what hope’s all about. Trying anyway,” he says, and then takes your shoulder in a hand. “Now, uh...you should probably sit down. You don’t have to tell me what your bad dream was about, but...we can talk until we’re both up for sleeping.”

It’s only then you think to wonder why he’s up, and you feel a little less alone when you realize the answer. Everyone has bad nights, it seems.

You let him steer you to the table by the window, and you both talk for a while. The moon is high above the distant beach, and...it feels like the first little while in the Program, when you were just two worried teenagers, before...well. It’s nice, you think, and you’re pretty sure you can trust your judgement on that.

You’re...you think you’re happy, you realize. To have a friend like Hajime -- that he _wants_ to be your friend despite what you’ve done to him -- to be alive and living with the person you... _all_ the people you love… Even with everything that’s happened, you’re happy right now.

You wonder...if this is what he meant. If this is the hope you’ve been searching for, the hope you believe in so deeply and so fiercely.

You wonder.


End file.
